Michael Morpurgo

Simon Reade

With famine gripping Ireland, Sean and Annie have just one chance of survival - they must find their father. Leaving their dying mother behind, they travel across rough seas to America. With only the gold torch that Annie wears as a necklace to protect them, they embark on a long and dangerous journey. But will they ever be reunited with their family? Twist of Gold is an epic adventure, a classic novel by the masterful storyteller and author of War Horse, Michael Morpurgo.

Twist of Gold

Private Peaceful relives the life of Private Tommo Peaceful, a young First World War soldier awaiting the firing squad at dawn. During the night, he looks back at his short but joyful past growing up in rural Devon: his exciting first days at school; the accident in the forest that killed his father; his adventures with Molly, the love of his life; and the battles and injustices of war that brought him to the front line.

Private Peaceful - A Play For An Ensemble

Sarah May

Simon Stephens

James Graham

Megan Barker

DJ Britton

Producers' Choice: Six Plays for Young Performers showcases some of the best plays for young people produced by the UK's leading theatre companies. The plays are ideal for young performers aged 13-25 and offer a diverse range of challenges, styles and subjects. The volume will prove essential for teachers and students of Drama and for youth drama groups. The plays include modern reworkings of classics, such as Simon Reade's witty and brilliantly inventive adaptation of Lewis Carroll's much-loved fantasy, and DJ Britton's version of Sophocles' Theban plays, the tragic Oedipus/Antigone. Contemporary teenage issues are dealt with in Megan Barker's beautiful and uplifting Promise and Sarah May's The Butterfly Club. Simon Stephens' hit-play Punk Rock set in a grammar school explores dislocation and aggression among sixth form pupils; James Graham's Tory Boyz is a fast-paced, political comedy about prejudice and ambition in Westminster. Each play features production notes and the volume is introduced by Paul Roseby, Artistic Director of the National Youth Theatre. For schools, youth theatre groups and drama colleges this anthology of thematically and stylistically diverse plays will prove an invaluable resource.

Promise; Oedipus/Antigone; Tory Boyz; Butterfly Club; Alice's Adventures in Wonderland; Punk Rock

Producers' Choice: Six Plays for Young Performers

‘It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ When Elizabeth Bennet first meets Mr Darcy, she thinks him arrogant and conceited. When she later discovers that he has scuppered the relationship between his friend Bingley and her sister Jane, she is determined to dislike him more than ever. In the sparkling comedy that follows, the family’s lives are turned upside down as Jane Austen shows the folly of judging by first impressions and pokes fun at the affectations and etiquette of provincial life.

Pride and Prejudice

From the Children's Laureate of England comes a stunning novel about the First World War. Private Thomas Peaceful has lied about his age to enlist. As Thomas stands night watch, his memories are full of his childhood. But each moment brings him closer to something he cannot bear to think about.

Private Peaceful

Jill Tomlinson

Private Peaceful and Other Adaptations

Salman Rushdie

Tim Supple

The life of a man born at the moment of India's independence becomes inextricably linked to that of his nation and is a whirlwind of disasters and triumphs that mirror modern India's course.

Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

Three war plays by Michael Morpurgo, author of War Horse, dramatised by Simon Reade. Private Peaceful relives the short life of Tommo growing up in rural Devon before fighting the battles and facing the injustices of the First World War. In Toro! Toro! young Antonito liberates his favourite bull from the ritualised killing of the bullfight as he tries to escape the Spanish Civil War. In The Mozart Question Paolo Levi discovers the astonishing truth about his parents’ flight to Venice from the gas chambers of the Second World War. Each play is accompanied by an introduction from Michael Morpurgo.

Morpurgo: War Plays

Philip Pullman

Outrageously zany and filed with non-stop surprises, Simon Reade’s theatrical adaptation of The Scarecrow and His Servant, renowned author Philip Pullman's fictional children's tale, is an enchanting play for young readers and performers. Delve into the magical world of Scarecrow as you accompany him as Jack, his trusty help-mate, and together you can embark on adventures that will make your head spin. From dodging dangerous bandits and surviving terrifying shipwrecks, to soaring through the skies with wild birds, this play is a roller-coaster ride of never-ending escapades. But when the river-polluting Buffaloni tyrants catch up with you for a final showdown, who will come to your rescue and save the day? A production of The Scarecrow and His Servant ran at the Southwark Playhouse in December 2008-January 2009.

The Scarecrow and His Servant

Using a wide range of legal, administrative and literary sources, this study explores the role of the royal pardon in the exercise and experience of authority in Tudor England. It examines such abstract intangibles as power, legitimacy, and the state by looking at concrete life-and-death decisions of the Tudor monarchs. Drawing upon the historiographies of law and society, political culture, and state formation, mercy is used as a lens through which to examine the nature and limits of participation in the early modern polity. Contemporaries deemed mercy as both a prerogative and duty of the ruler. Public expectations of mercy imposed restraints on the sovereign's exercise of power. Yet the discretionary uses of punishment and mercy worked in tandem to mediate social relations of power in ways that most often favoured the growth of the state.

Simon Reade

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